Saturday, January 28, 2012

Loaded and Biased

The fiend Salmond's question in favour of breaking up the United Kingdom has caused a mighty blip in favour of Scotch nationalism and has therefore been universally denounced as loaded and biased. Here an expert provides a word-by-word analysis, showing the fiendish cunning whereby the question has been phrased in order to ensnare the gullible.

Do The very first word of the question implies action, as though breaking up the United Kingdom were something positive, constructive and progressive like Trident or the poll tax.

you Salmond here personalises the issue, addressing his audience as though they were adult human individuals rather than abstract psephological resources to be utilised and expended for the greater glory of British democracy.

agree Agreeability is more agreeable than disagreeability. Had the question asked whether respondents disagreed with something, many would have voted otherwise in order to seem agreeable to anyone who might happen to witness them voting in a secret ballot. The word also implies that there are people to be agreed with, i.e. that Scotch nationalism is a popular political enterprise rather than a perverse minority obsession.

that This bland conjunction exudes neutrality, and may on that account alone be treated with justified suspicion.

Scotland The name of the disputed region, calculated to stir up misguided local sentiment in those lacking sufficient dignity to consider Britishness a point of pride.

should The word implies obligation, and perhaps even moral necessity, neither of which should be invoked in a mature debate unless it concerns social cleansing or meritorious homicide.

be Another small but significant verb, like do, which packs a considerable freight of ontological intensity into a deceptively concentrated monosyllabic lexeme. There is a terrible postmodernist irresponsibility in Salmond's casual yet manipulative use of a word whose full implications have not been properly understood by even the most eminent philosophers.

an The use of the indefinite article implies that Scotland will be able to sustain itself as a unitary state, one and indivisible. Yet negotiations are already afoot to make it part of Norway, and even of Europe.

independent A highly loaded term, offering the implicit claim that Scotland's present circumstances are repressed and downtrodden, and that voting for the snare and illusion "independence" would somehow express a wish for the Good Thing that is independence.

country? Carries the clear implication that if the United Kingdom broke up Scotland would be a real country like England, rather than a pathetic tattered remnant like India or the United States.